red string (will be your noose)
by SerenLyall
Summary: While on a covert mission in Cardassian-occupied territory, Captain Owen Paris and Ensign Kathryn Janeway are captured. Neither are prepared for the nightmare they will face - and neither will be the same again.
1. Chapter 1

**disclaimer** : not mine, never will be. which might be a good thing, all things considered.

 **trigger warnings: rape/non-con** (semi-explicit) **, torture, violence, language**

* * *

 _The Red String of Fate:_ _the fabled red string that binds two lovers together_

 _From low to high doth dissolution climb,  
_ _And sink from high to low, along a scale  
Of awful notes, whose concord shall not fail.  
-William Wordsworth_

 **the red string of fate (will be your noose)**

They drag her in, boneless and bloody, and drop her at my feet. My wrists burn and my shoulders groan as I thrash against the shackles holding me upright, and I feel a strangled mewl pull free of my throat as I try, and fail, to kneel down beside her.

If she hears my cry, she does not respond.

"Tell me, Captain," Gul Amut says, stepping forward, "was it worth it?"

I look up at him, dragging my face away from my ensign's ravaged back to glare at the Cardassian standing now before me. He smiles, and crosses his arms over his broad chest, deep set eyes gleaming in the harsh lights of the cell.

"Go to hell," I growl. The sound is low and as battered as my body—as her body—and I force every lingering trace of bile and pain and hate that I feel curdling in my belly into my voice. The words are bitter and nauseating in my mouth, in my throat, and I brace myself for the blow I know is sure to come.

It does not.

"Oh, Captain," the Gul says, thick and slow, with a long smile. "The pain has made you dull."

He makes a motion with his right hand, and from behind him two guards appear, hulking and brutish. The Gul steps aside, and before I can even cry out, the two guards have knelt and dragged her upright. Her head lolls forward, her hair falling over her shoulders and around her face in damp clumps, her knees buckling to drag the tops of her feet across the hard floor.

I smell blood—and then I taste it, and taste bile and the shrillness of my scream, as I truly see her for the first time.

When they had dragged her in, it had been by her wrists, and they had dropped her on her stomach. I had seen the bruises, seen the long, coiling burns and the weeping lash marks cut deep into her back. But lying there, on her stomach, with her hair hiding her face and her arms trapped beneath her, I had not seen the extent of the damage they had done to her.

But now—now, I do. And I scream.

Her breasts are mutilated. Her left cheek bears the distinct mark of Cardassian teeth, and her jaw purples with a dozen and more fingerprints. There is blood smeared on her lips, on her neck, and beneath and above it the sticky white paste of Cardassian seed. Her stomach, too, bears the marks of Cardassian hands, and her thighs are streaked with red, with white, over blue and black skin.

"You bastards!" I shriek, only realize I am speaking as the words leave my mouth. "You fucking bastards!"

Gul Amut steps forward, blocking my sight of her, and grabs my chin to force my eyes to his. "Tell me," he says again, that long smile still pulling the corners of his lips into a scythe, "was your reticence worth it?"

His words strike me like a lodestone in the stomach. I retch, only for nothing to come up; my mouth is bitter and empty, my breath sour and ripped from my lungs.

I've done this to her, I think. This was my doing.

I wish, for the first time since the first blow fell, that I could cry, but no tears will come.

The Gul's smile yawns. "At last you understand," he says. His voice is soft, almost a croon. "Now tell me, Captain," and he releases my chin and steps back, revealing my ensign once more, "is there anything you would like to confess?"

They have moved her, in the moment it took for the Gul to speak with me. They have pushed her to her knees now, turned to the side so that her body faces toward the wall to my right, her arms held behind her by a guard. The same guard holds her head up with a fist in her hair.

I look at my ensign, look at the guards, then look once more at the Gul. "Go to hell," I say.

The words are damnation on my tongue.

The Gul nods once. A second guard steps forward, his grin matching the jangle of his belt as he unbuckles it, then his pants. He unsheathes himself, taking a moment to cup the length of his shaft with one hand, and then presses the tip of it against my ensign's closed lips. She jerks, and I can see her shudder in the guard's hold, neck straining as she tries to pull away.

The Cardassian guards laugh. The Gul, standing just at the edge of my sight, grins.

I jerk at my restraints. I feel a snarl bubble from my throat, drip from my bared teeth. I see her flinch, her head for just an instant twisting toward me. Her eyes are closed, her face pale, her jaw locked.

And then the guard standing in front of her reaches out, caresses her cheek, then forces his fingers into her mouth, bracing her jaw open with thumbs at the back of her teeth. She does not try to bite him, and I try not to wonder why. The Cardassian groans, once, the tip of his penis pushing once more against her lips, then rises onto the balls of his feet and slides his cock into her open mouth.

I do not know if I scream. I can feel it well within my chest, and can feel the hatred thrashing behind and around my heart in thick, black cords. My vision swims with red, then with shadow, and I know that if I were free I would tear off the Cardassian bastard's cock with my bare hands. I want to kill him, and the Cardassian holding her, and the guards standing in the doorway and along the walls watching, and the Gul observing with his cool amusement.

I want to kill them all—including myself, I realize, as one of the small bones in my wrist gives way with a shuddering snap, because without me they would have no cause to hurt her.

The Cardassian is finished almost before I can finish envisioning what I would wish do to him. He steps back, cock limp and dripping, and fastens himself back into his pants.

I find my voice at last. "Fuck you," I scream. My broken wrist breaks again as I throw myself forward, teeth snapping at thin air. "Fuck you, you _fucking_ cowards."

Gul Amut looks at me. I do not look at him.

"Tell me, Captain," he says, voice soft and lilting in the tone I hate the most. "Is there anything you would like to confess?"

Her lips are moving. I can see them, and can see the cum seeping from the corner of her mouth and running down her chin, but I cannot make out what it is she says. I strain, in body and in sight, struggling to reach her in any way I can.

"Tell me, Captain," the Gul says again. "Is there anything—anything at all—you would like to confess?"

The Cardassian who had just fucked her kneels down in front of her. He lifts a hand, cupping her chin, and forces her face up. "Speak up, little bird," he says. "We all want to hear what you have to say."

For a long second there is still only silence, her lips still moving, her eyes still closed. And then, faintly, I hear her.

"Please." Her voice is cracked. Shattered. "Please," she says again, barely louder. "Don't." She shudders, and her lips move silently again, her closed eyes pressing tighter together as she tries to turn away—away from the hand holding her face, away from me.

"What was that?" the guard asks, following her turn only to force her back towards me. "Speak up, little bird, or we'll have to give you another lesson."

My heart is a thousand splinters beating against my ribs. My throat is swollen, my lungs filled with dust. I cannot breathe, and cannot speak, and terror and pride war within me, splitting my head with a nail.

"Please," she whispers, and my heart thunders. "Not again."

I break.

"Well, Captain?" Gul Amut asks.

I am crying. I taste the tears as they drip past my lips and onto my tongue. I think, distantly, through the veil of pain and terror as well as the tears, that I am surprised I still can cry.

"Captain?"

"Don't hurt her." My voice is weak and wet. "Please, whatever you do, don't hurt her again."

"Confess," the Gul says, "and we will have no cause to touch her again."

"I confess." The words are out before I can rationalize the wisdom behind them. Anything— _anything_ —to keep another Cardassian cock from touching her. "Please," I beg, "just don't touch her again."

"And what," the Gul asks, "do you confess to?"

I choke. Swallow. Force the words out of my mouth, feeling them cut my throat and my tongue to bleeding ribbons as I do. "I confess," I gasp, "that I and this ensign under my command were in Cardassian territory to spy for the Federation, on Starfleet orders, with the intent to plot and carry out a plan of attack." I have heard the words so many times now, spoken and screamed and whispered by Cardassian lips, that it is easy to remember them—both the parts that are true, and the parts that are Cardassian additions tailored to give them full right to imprison and question, even under Federation law.

The Gul's smile, somehow, widens even further. "Now," he all but purrs, "was that so hard, Captain?"

I sag in my bonds, my legs no longer strong enough to keep me upright. I can look nowhere but her. She is silent and still, limp in the Cardassian's hold, her eyes closed and her expression barren.

I wonder, through the tears still dripping down my face, if she is already lost.

The Gul is nearly out of the door before I realize that he is moving. He pauses, and I glance up at him, a quick flick of my eyes from Kathryn's face. He has turned, and is looking at the guards standing in the room.

"Do what you like with her," he says. "Just make sure she doesn't leave this room alive."

There is noise—shrieking, and wailing, and red and white and black—in my ears and in my head. I am screaming, and there are words but I cannot tell what I say. I am cursing—Amut, and the Cardassians, and the galaxy in whole—and I cannot stop for fear that I will dissolve into ash and hate.

The door closes on my screams, locking them, and me, in with her and the guards.

The guard holding her pushes her forward, sending her sprawling. She lands on the floor with the slick slap of skin against stone, and through the echoes of my dying screams, I think I hear her whimper.

I say her name. I say it once, and again. I beg for her forgiveness. I look at the guards, circling slowly, and beg for them to take me instead.

"Is that what you want?" one of the guards—the faceless, leering guards—asks her. "Would you rather we fuck your captain instead?"

They lift her up, hands beneath her arms and in her hair, and drag her to stand in front of me. "Look at him," they order, and they slap her face and squeeze one of her mangled breasts until she does. Her eyes are dry and wild, and she will not look at my face.

"Is that what you want?" a guard—not the same guard as the first, I think—asks. "Would you rather we fuck your captain than you?"

She does not meet my eyes.

"Well?" another asks. He reaches around and presses two fingers into the oozing hollow that was her left nipple.

"Yes," she gasps. She closes her eyes and turns her head, and even when one guard slaps her, she will not look at me again. "Please," she begs, her face turned to the stained ground. "Please…"

They laugh, and release their hold. She lands on the floor, and a guard kicks her. She flops weakly, rolling onto her back, leaving a smear of red in her wake.

"Hear that?" The voice is familiar; the speaker has spoken already. "Poor little captain—willing to sacrifice everything for her, and what do you get in return? Your little bitch begging for us to fuck you instead."

More laughter. I burn, and saliva cools on my chin as I snarl yet again. "Fucking bastards," I say, as if that will cost them anything.

Another guard kicks her. She whimpers again, and tries to curl onto one side. She does not get far.

Two guards pin her down with the ease of long practice. She cries out, and thrashes beneath their hold, but they grind her wrists and back into the floor with their knees hard against her bones. They speak in their own language, and there is more crude laughter as a third guard steps forward, unbuttoning his pants even before he kneels to force her knees apart.

They fuck her, one by one and two by two, until they are spent. I can do nothing but watch, and scream at them until my voice dies the death I wish I could. She, however, does not cry; she takes it with the silence of death already died, and with each moment that passes, I pray to a God I have never believed in for her deliverance.

When they are done, they drag her to the center of the floor and drop her. She lands, her fall unbroken, on her back, and with one booted foot, a guard forces her head toward me. Her eyes are open, but I know she cannot see me.

She is not yet dead, but I wish that she was.

They stand around her, conversing for a moment longer in their harsh voices with their harsher words. They look at her, then at me, and then they smile in grotesque mockery at one another.

"One more gift for you," the guard at the fore of the group says. He turns to his companions, and from the back a long-handled knife is passed to him. The blade is long and smooth, edged on one side with a razor sheen and tipped with a wicked point.

"Hold her down," the guard orders. It is more for my benefit, I suspect, than for anyone's.

I can do nothing but watch, in sickness and horror, as three guards pool around Kathryn, kneel, and force her legs up and apart. The knife bearer kneels between her thighs, a hand creeping beneath her to hold her in place—and then, with a single deft move, he drives the blade in up to the hilt.

It is the first time since this nightmare has begun that I hear her scream.

And then there is blood—so much blood. It pools around her, thick and red, as the Cardassian pulls the knife free of her. The blade drips, and the four of them stand, dropping her carelessly once more to the floor.

"It's been fun," the knife-bearer says with a smile, wiping the blade on the corner of his shirt, "but we have our orders. Enjoy your last hour with her."

And then they are gone, the door opening and closing and locking behind them, leaving me alone with nothing but my hatred and my dying ensign for company.

"Kathryn." Her name is a shard of glass on my tongue. "Kathryn, you have to stay with me."

I hear her groan, soft and weak—and then I hear her breath hitch, like a hammer against porcelain. Her eyes close, and she curls slowly into a ball, fingers tearing white trails through the blood and fluids on her stomach. The blood runs down her thighs, over her knees and hips, washing away every trace of violence but the last.

"Kathryn," I say again. My voice breaks. "Please."

"I'm sorry."

I almost do not hear her over the rasp of my own breath and the pained panting of her own.

"I'm sorry," she says again, a little louder. The words are buoyed by a hitching sob. "Please," and now, so suddenly I feel as if she has stabbed me with a blunt awl, she is begging. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

"Shhh," I croon, as gently and as soothingly as I can. "It's alright, Ensign."

She shakes her head, tearing the skin around the bite mark on her cheek against the rough floor. "No," she whimpers. "No."

I am surprised she has the strength to speak so much. It makes me wonder—and it makes me fear. I have seen enough dying men gather their last strength to speak their final words to fear what this last desperation of hers portends.

"Hush, Ensign," I say, sharper. "That's an order. I want you to save your strength."

"Please, sir," she says, and I do not know if she did not hear or if she is simply ignoring me. "Forgive me."

She blinks, and for the first time, she looks at me. Her eyes meet mine, and in that instant all I want to do is fold her into my arms and hold her tightly. She deserves that much comfort, here, at the end.

"Please, sir."

Her voice, now, is little more than a whimper. Her left hand spasms against her side, and her entire body shudders. Her hair, I realize, when wet is only a few shades away from blood.

I shake my head. "Not now, Ensign," I tell her. "Not until we make it back to Earth. I won't hear it 'til then."

She looks at me, then looks away. She shudders again. I can only imagine the pain she is in.

"I just need you to hold on, Ensign," I tell her. "Please." And now it is me who is begging.

"I can't." It is a sob. There is a second, then a third, and then choked silence once more. "I'm sorry," she says. Her blood coats her hands, coats the floor beneath her, creeps towards my bare feet. It is such a garish red that I think surely it could stain the whole world with its touch.

"No." It is a shout as much as an order. "No, Kathryn. Don't you fucking dare give up on me. Not now. That's a fucking order."

"I can't," she says again, weaker. She is getting weaker by the minute—by the second. "I can't…"

I scream for what must be the hundredth time today. My broken wrist cracks against its shackle, and the other groans. My feet skid against the floor, and the air stings against fresh blood as I tear open the fragile scabs that have grown over my own wounds.

I have to reach her, I think. I have to. I will not let her die alone.

"Kathryn!" Her name is a scream. "Kathryn, don't you fucking dare die on me."

She shudders, and does not reply.

"KATHRYN!"

And then the world explodes.

There is fire, and smoke, and then the wavering shape of men pouring through the door and into the blood-soaked cell. They are faceless mannequins above the familiar black and yellow uniforms of Starfleet troops, no eyes, no mouths, no hair. I stare, confused and alarmed, heart breaking through my ribs and climbing into my throat. Has help come? I wonder. Or have the dead come to claim one of their own?

A hand presses against my shoulder. A voice, filtered and hollow, distant but growing closer. Movement—and then, at last, beneath the mask as it is pulled away, a face. A human face.

"Sir? Sir!"

I blink, and struggle through the sudden watering of my eyes, to focus on the man speaking to me. I see a smile—of relief, or of encouragement—and bright blue eyes.

"We're here to get you out." The bright eyes flash, and the smile grows. The hand on my shoulder squeezes. "Just hold on."

There is a hiss of electronics, and I gasp in sharp pain as my arms fall, suddenly unpinioned by the shackles holding them aloft. I stumble, only for strong arms to catch me before I can fall.

"Come on, sir." The voice speaking is close beside my ear. It is Bright Eyes holding me up. "We have to get out of here."

I am looking at the floor. The floor is red and wet. It is red and wet with her blood.

Kathryn.

"Kathryn," I gasp, and struggle to straighten in the man's grip. "Kathryn, what about—"

"We've got her, sir," Bright Eyes says. "Dickenson and Tighe have her. Now come on, sir. It's time for us to leave."

I nod. The smoke is thick, and she is not on the floor where I last saw her.

Another man—or is it a woman?—slides in on my other side, and before I can protest, they pull a mask down over my face. I drag in a breath, and the air tastes stale, but blessedly, blessedly free of the iron taste of blood, or the sour taste of Cardassian cum, or the sweet taste of pain, both mine and hers.

Hands under my arms. They are dragging me forward, and I am stumbling between them. The smoke billows around us, thick and black. There are bodies, slumped still and broken on the floor, and there are scorch marks on the walls and yellow-burning fires in the corners. I stumble, and the hands of the man and woman on either side hold me up, hold me strong.

"We're almost there," a voice in my ear says. It is cool, and firm, and feminine.

We climb over rubble, then out through a hole in the wall into the phaser-shredded dark of night, leaving the smoke behind us. The man and woman haul me down the jagged hill beyond, guiding me around corpses clad in Cardassian armor and black-and-yellow, forcing me down and covering my head with their arms as golden beams of energy flash back and forth above us.

More voices. Screams, and shouts, and above it all the _hiss-spit_ of phaser and rifle fire. The ground is broken beneath my feet, hard rock and shattered stone, and if it were not for the arms beneath mine I would fall. Instead they drag me forward, urging me on with strained voices.

For a second I think I hear a scream I know. Then a flurry of movement, and Bright Eyes tears the now-unneeded mask from my head and throws it to the ground. It lands with a thud, and then is lost to the night and the prison behind us.

"Go!" It is Bright Eyes. "I've got him," he says, as I trip on a rock and he hauls me upright yet again.

The warmth of the woman's arm leaves mine, and I feel as much as see her turn back. "Where—?" I gasp, panting, barely able to drag air into my petrified lungs—it is cold and dry, tasting of desert and metal and night.

"Not now," Bright Eyes snaps. "We're almost there."

I do not say that I have been told that already, and that that time it was a lie. I do not have the breath to speak.

Light. More shouting. A hulking shadow rising from the dark earth that I know—or, at least, recognize. Men and women kneel on the ground to either side of the metal ramp leading into the shuttle, the weapons they hold flashing yellow in the darkness.

"We're almost there," Bright Eyes says again, and this time I know he speaks the truth.

We reach the foot of the ramp. Another man runs down, grabs my other arm and helps Bright Eyes guide me up and into the shuttle. I blink in the red light, knowing that I should feel more than I do. All I feel is empty, and dazed.

They push me down into a seat, and the new-come aide drapes a blanket around me. He says words I can barely understand, like "shock," and "trauma," but I can do nothing but stare at the wall across from me. It is bathed in sweet red light, throwing each rivet and bolt into dark relief. It reminds me of the blood that crept across the floor toward my toes, the blood that painted her skin red…

Her.

Where is she?

I look up, look around. "Where?" I croak. My throat is dry, my voice parched. It seems difficult to remember why.

"Easy, sir." It is the man who draped the blanket around me. I do not see Bright Eyes anywhere. "Just rest. We'll be taking off soon."

I shake my head. "Where is she?" I ask. "I—Where is she?" It is important that I find her. I _must_ find her.

"Ensign Janeway?" the man asks. He is crouched down next to me, his hair as dark as the shadows around us.

I nod. Obviously that is who I meant. Who else could she be?

Shadow Hair glances quickly at the shuttle door, then back at me. He seems uneasy. "She's on her way, sir," he tells me. "She'll be here soon. Now please, sit back."

I do not sit back. Something is wrong—I can feel it.

"Sir!" Shadow Hair pushes me down when I try to stand. "Please, sir, you won't help anyone. Please, just sit. We'll be ready to leave in just a minute."

Yelling. Footsteps on the ramp.

Shadow Hair grabs my arm and shoves me back down into the seat with a hand on my shoulder. I feel the straps of a safety belt tighten over my chest before I can try to push him away again.

"Fall back!"

It is Bright Eyes. His voice is stamped into my mind and memory. I turn, and there he is, standing at the edge of the shuttle door, facing out with a phaser in hand.

The night is lit with the flashes of a dozen phasers. Yellow-gold wars with red and shadow, and I squint against the shock of the change. Through the halos left behind my eyes as the last volley of phaser-fire fades, I see three last shapes limping up the ramp.

One of them is Kathryn.

She is pale—paler now, even, than she was on the floor—but she is upright, if only just. The blood has painted her skin black, and if I did not know she was human, I would think her a demon. She supports a man clad in Starfleet colors, one arm wrapped around his waist and her other hand gripping the front of his uniform as if that is the only thing keeping her on her feet. I suspect it is.

The last figure is, I think, the woman who had left me and Bright Eyes. She still wears a mask, but I think I recognize the broad shoulders and waist, and the shock of pale hair that creeps around the collar of her uniform. She is shadowing the two of them, phaser in one hand, the other outstretched as if to push them both along.

"That's it," Bright Eyes shouts. He slaps a hand against his commbadge as the trio staggers up and over the lip of the ramp. "O'Neill to the pilot: Let's go."

The last of the black-and-yellow men and women leap up onto the ramp as it begins to close, taking one or two last shots before their phasers fall dead. The ramp latches with a hiss—and then there comes the hum of thrusters, and the shuttle rocks as it lifts off.

There are voices—so many voices, male and female, hard and soft, angry and concerned. Names, and questions, and demands fly back and forth over and around me, loud and louder until all I want is to cover my hands with my ears and close my eyes.

I do not.

I find her still holding onto the man she dragged up the ramp. There are others around her now, speaking to her, reaching for her. She flinches, and I see her eyes flash wild. Her fingers dig into the man by her side, who flinches in turn. He looks down at her, mouth opening to speak words I cannot hear.

The shuttle shakes, the concussive thump of weapons fire slashing through the air. The safety straps dig into my skin where the blanket does not cover me. I remember, for the first time in days, that I am naked.

When I look up to find her again, she is on the floor. The man she had been holding onto is down as well, though he picks himself up with a grunt and a groan, favoring his right leg. Then he shouts, and the movement that had settled into the seats against the walls ignites again.

"Medic," someone cries, and Shadow Hair beside me leaps to his feet and stumbles across the shuttle, barely keeping his balance as the deck bucks.

He kneels beside Kathryn. His hands fly over her body, brushing her skin and touching her blood. His hands come away daubed with her life. "Hail the _Dawnbreaker_ ," he snaps. "Alert Doctor Fraiser that we have an inbound medical emergency."

I strain against the straps holding me down, fumbling for a release. "Please," I say, to no one and to everyone. "Save her. You have to save her."

Shadow Hair looks up at me. I am surprised; I did not think I had spoken loud enough to be heard over the voices and the still-echoing weapons fire. "We're going to try," he says. Then he looks at Bright Eyes, and gestures something I do not understand.

Bright Eyes nods. He moves, and kneels when he draws near. His voice is soft, soothing, as if speaking to a feral dog. "I'm going to sedate you now," he tells me. "It's for the best," he adds, when he sees me recoil and bare my teeth. "For everyone."

I shake my head. "No," I say. "No, I don't want to leave her. I can't—"

There is a gentle prick at the side of my neck, and then the cool flush of sedative in my blood.

"No," I say again. "No…"

I collapse against my restraints, head falling forward against my will. I fight as my eyelids grow heavy, as shadows coalesce at the edges of my mind. No, I try to say again, but my lips will not move. My tongue is thick and heavy, and my throat is as slow as a slug.

For an instant I am once again in the cell—see again the harsh lights and the stone floor and the garish red of her blood, smell her life and her death, hear the Cardassians' laughter.

My last thought, as darkness finally overtakes me, is that I hope I will not find myself waking to her corpse.

Please, I pray to the God I may believe in, let her live.

And then I sleep.

* * *

 _a/n: this fic was initially titled 'Knife-Work.' I ultimately vetoed that idea._

 _this is the first in a two part mini-series. many thanks to absynthe-minded for her support as I wrote it, and to cheile and ewokshootsfirst for reading over it and not only assuring me it was good, but giving some good feedback as well._


	2. Chapter 2

I am lying on a bed, and that bed is soft.

That is the first thing that I know upon regaining consciousness.

The second is that I do not hurt.

I open my eyes. The ceiling is white where it stretches above me, though the edges of the rivets that hold it together are cast in shadowed relief. There is light, but it is dim and grey, like twilight or like dawn. I am not sure which.

A breath, deep and careful. A movement of my hands, light and just as careful. The pain remains mysteriously absent.

I sit up slowly. Again, I am shocked to discover that I feel no pain. Each breath is easy and effortless; each movement, of muscle and skin, is unstrained and done with little more than half a thought. It is novel and strange, after having been so long the lover of agony.

The walls of a Starfleet sickbay look back at me when I look around. They are pale and unassuming, with darkened displays and computer terminals built into corners at eye height. Stands and trays of medical equipment wait at hip-height along the pale walls, beside the beds that lay empty in twos and threes beside and across from me.

It is just like every other sickbay I have been in.

Somehow, though, it looks different. I do not know why.

Movement. And then there is a figure in the doorway. I turn my head and look at her, and am met with the sight of red hair and blue eyes and a face that will broke no argument about the nature of beauty. She is dressed in Starfleet medical's blue, with a pale lab coat drifting from her shoulders.

"It is good seeing you awake, Captain," the doctor says. She comes to a halt by my bedside, and from the depths of her left-hand pocket she pulls forth a medical tricorder. It beeps when she opens it, and beeps again when she scans me with the small nodule she holds in her right hand. I hold very still.

"Where am I?"

It is a silly question, asked by invalids and the confused, and I know that as soon as it leaves my lips. But I have nothing else to ask, and I want to ask a question. And, I realize, when she looks up at me with something that is not quite pity, and not quite sympathy, but is something in between, that I may be both invalid and confused.

"You are on the _Dawnbreaker_ ," the doctor says. Her voice is as kind and cool as it was when she first spoke to me.

I nod. I have heard the name _Dawnbreaker_ before, in the shuttle that took me and Kathryn from the prison.

Oh, God, I think, or say, or moan. Kathryn.

The doctor—I realize I still do not know her name—looks at me with some concern. I think I may have spoken aloud after all.

"Who are you?" I blurt out. The question that I want to ask—that I need to ask, with every cell of skin and bone—sticks in my mouth, behind my teeth, and will not form on my tongue.

The doctor lifts one arched eyebrow, as if she knows that that was not what I had intended to ask. "My name is Dr. Beverly Crusher," she says. "I am the chief medical officer on the _Dawnbreaker._ "

I swallow. The question I want and need to ask sits heavy like clay in my mouth. "My—" My voice fails. I look at the walls, and at the ceiling, and for an instant all I see is cement floor and blood and, from the corner of my eye, hair that is only half a shade away from blood.

There is a hand on my shoulder, gripping tight. Then a voice. "—ain. –ptain. Captain!"

I blink. Drag in a shuddering breath.

The doctor's worried face climbs into view. She is looking at me with blue eyes wide with concern, and a mouth that speaks my name again, and then again, with increasing force. I shake my head, and shiver from her hold, and see that her hair is redder than _hers_ ever was.

"I—I." I have never stuttered before, and now I find that I have done it twice. I cannot calm my heartbeat, nor the trembling in my hands. I wonder if this is some effect of medication, or if I have suffered permanent nerve damage.

"Easy, Captain Paris," Dr. Crusher says gently. Then there is more movement, and I feel the tip of a hypospray against my neck. It hisses, and cool serenity spreads into my fingers. "Sleep, now," she murmurs. "There will be time for questions later."

When I wake again, the lights are yellow rather than grey, and the doctor has been replaced by a young, dark-haired boy. He smiles at me when he sees me open my eyes, and he sits straighter on his perch on my bed.

"Hi," he says. His voice is high with youth, and his eyes are as bright blue as Dr. Crusher's.

"Hi," I say slowly in return. I do not know what else to say.

"Mom was worried," the boy says.

I frown. I do not know what to do with that information.

The boy sees my confusion, and takes pity on me. I can see it in his open face—though it is not the kind of pity I have already begun to expect. "She asked me to watch you," the boy tells me. He says it so matter-of-factly that it seems like nothing else could be more obvious. "She was afraid you might do something both of you would regret. And she thought that a child, like me, might help keep you from flashbacks."

He says it all with the air of a young child repeating what he has heard. But beneath that there is the carefully guarded tone of a man who knows exactly what it is he says. I am struck with the notion that this child is far smarter than I am, or ever could dream of being.

I blink at him, and then push myself up into a sitting position. "Is that right?" I ask.

The boy nods. "Yes."

"So who is your mother, then?" I ask.

"Dr. Beverly Crusher," the boy says. There is a great deal of pride in his voice when he says this. "And I'm Wesley."

I smile. "Nice to meet you, Wesley," I say. "I'm Captain Owen Paris. But you can call me Owen."

The boy smiles in return, and then shifts forward on the bed so that, when he extends his right hand, I can reach it easily with my own. "Nice to meet you," Wesley says, and gives my hand a small shake.

"Nice to meet you too," I say.

There is an awkward moment of silence. Wesley looks as if he wants to ask me something, but I suspect what he wishes to ask me has been forbidden by his mother. I suspect I know what the question is—or, at least, what it will be about—and because I do not want to talk about it, I leave the boy to stew in his own silent musings.

At last, Wesley heaves a sigh, and when he looks up at me his face is broken only by an easy smile. "My mother says you're a Captain." He pulls a face. "And you just said that you were one as well. I really should listen better." This last part he says to himself, and I cannot help but smile at the undercurrent of childish irritation. For all his big words and complex sentences, he is just a boy—and he reminds me, with a sudden pang, of my own son.

Tom.

It is the first time in what feels like an eternity that I have thought of him. Those first days, I had thought of him almost constantly; he had been my life-line, the one fixed point in the galaxy that I had clung to to give me strength in the face of the Cardassians and their laughter and their pain. But then, as the minutes had begun to last for hours, and the hours for days, I had thought less and less of him.

It was too painful, then, to think of my son—my bright-eyed, bright-laughing son, who was all that was good and just and right in the galaxy.

Now, though, I think of him again. I wonder what he and Theresa, my wife, have been told. A shuttle accident is usually the standard cover story; of the reported number of shuttle accidents, there are, I suspect, only half as many crashed shuttles. Or perhaps Starfleet Command had gotten more creative. Perhaps they had told Tom and Theresa that a mission had gone wrong, and Ensign Janeway and I had been trapped in a collapsed mine while trying to rescue the last group of villagers…

Ensign Janeway.

And suddenly, everything falls into hard, sick reality.

Kathryn.

I look up at Wesley. He is watching me—watching my face, watching my eyes, watching the way my hands have tightened on top of the blankets that cover my lap—but he does not jump when my head snaps up. He only looks curious.

I, however, am burning. "The woman who came in with me," I say, too quickly. My words tangle, tumble out of my mouth in a ruinous pile between us. I take a deep breath. "The woman, Ensign Janeway. Do you know how she is?"

Is she alive? I want to ask, but find that I cannot.

Wesley's clear face brightens. "Mom says she'll be okay. Though," and here he frowns, and his eyes grow a distant sort of glaze for a second before clearing again, "she says that she's going to have permanent vaginal scarring, due to the tools used during the initial surgery."

I stare, dumbfounded, at the boy. I am horrified, mostly, but there is also confusion, and a sense of something too big and too terrible to bear hanging over me. It lies in the words _scarring_ , and _permanent_ , and _vaginal_ —

And suddenly I am gasping, and the world is closing in on me in a thousand shades of white and black and red. I am everywhere, and I am nowhere, and I am sitting in the bed of the _Dawnbreaker_ and I am standing shackled to a pole in a Cardassian prison cell. I am cold, and hot, and I can see the Cardassians laugh as they come again, and again, and again in the body of my Ensign.

The boy is yelling. And sobbing. And begging, "I'm sorry," first to me then to the woman who rushes in at his cries. "I didn't know," I hear the boy say, through her screams and the laughter and the roar of blood in my ears. "I just told him what you said in your report on Ensign Janeway, and—"

And then there is the snick of a hypospray against my neck once more, and I slide into blissful, blessed sleep.

~*x*~

When I wake again, I find that I am no longer on the _Dawnbreaker_. In fact, I am on no ship. The sub-audible hum of a ship's engines is absent from my bones, and there is sunlight—real, golden sunlight—drifting in through a window to the right of my bed.

I sit up slowly. Like before, I find myself startled by the absence of pain at the movement. There is only the stretch of new-grown skin, and the pull of new-knit muscle. The sunshine is warm on my face, and when I draw in a careful breath, I taste the salt of the ocean and the cool decay of an autumn breeze.

The floor is cold against my bare feet, the air cool through the thin hospital smock that covers my nakedness. For a second, as my legs take my weight for the first time in time uncountable, my knees threaten to buckle. I sit quickly, the hospital mattress sagging beneath me—and then I push myself upright once again, and this time I take a tottering step forward and do not fall.

I am in San Francisco. The city's skyscrapers look down on me as I stare up at them, the windowsill hard beneath the palms of my hands. I look to the left, toward the bay, and in the distance I can see the dome Starfleet Headquarters.

I wonder, briefly, when I will be summoned there. An empty pit yawns in my stomach at the thought, and I push it away as I turn from the window and back towards my bed. I do not want to think of that—do not want to think of the consequences and fallout of my actions these last days and weeks.

The door opens when I am two steps from my bed. An Andorian nurse enters, looking kind but busy, though she comes to a quick halt when she sees me standing. Then she clucks, a distinctly matronly sound of disapproval, and she bustles forward to usher me the last few feet to bed. I let her fuss over me for a second, and before I can glare her away, she steps back and pulls a padd and medical tricorder from a pocket on the inside of her white nurse's coat.

She scans me, and records her findings. I am silent. I want this nurse to like me; nurses, I have discovered during my stints as an invalid, are the lifeblood of hospitals, and it is them one should go to if you have a request, or want information. The doctors are professional, and competent, and well-educated, but it is the nurses who keep the place running, and the patients alive in all but the direst of emergencies.

"The doctor will be in soon to talk with you." The nurse smiles at me, and I smile back.

"Thank you," I say, "Nurse…"

"Mianni," Mianni says. She rests one of her hands on my shoulder for a reassuring instant, and then she breezes toward the door. "Please remain in bed until the doctor has a chance to speak with you," she says, turning just before exiting. "Much of your skin and muscle tissue is still in the final stages of regrowth, and no one wants you to go and tear it."

I laugh. It feels false on my tongue, but I see her smile widen at the sound, and so I do not choke on it. "Thank you, Nurse Mianni," I say. "I'll bear that in mind."

When she is gone, I settle back against the pillows behind me. I hope that the doctor comes soon. I do not want to be alone with my thoughts for too long. They are too loud, and too silent, and sometimes both at once, and though the feel of the sunshine on my face and the taste of the salt breeze on my tongue does much to ward off the stone walls of the Cardassian prison, as the silence stretches into minutes, I hear again, and then again, and again, her screams.

I must drift off, for I am startled awake by the sound of the door opening. I sit upright too quickly, and feel the muscles around the right side of my ribcage squawk with pained protest. For two seconds I cannot breathe—and then I feel a cool hand on my back, straightening me from where I slumped forward and helping me to decompress my ribs. I drag in a long, shuddering breath, and then another, and then the pain is nothing more than a fading memory.

When I look up, it is to see a young human man standing beside my bed, looking at me with what can only be concern.

"I'm Doctor Samir. How are you feeling, Captain Paris?" he asks. His voice is a cool, rich tenor, and it reminds me of the rich loam of my wife's flower garden. He is tall and skinny, though well-muscled, and sports a neatly trimmed beard that frames his pointed jaw. His skin is a dark tan, his eyes onyx, and I find myself trusting this man almost instantly.

"A little sore," I tell him honestly.

Dr. Samir laughs. It is as cool and rich a sound as his voice. "I am not surprised," he says. "We regrew more than 70 percent of the tissue on your back, and even fifty years ago we may have needed to replace seven of your ribs with artificial bone."

I cannot help the shock that I feel ripple through me. "That bad?" I ask. My voice, I hear, sounds very small.

Dr. Samir nods. "We almost lost you," he says. He is deadly serious.

"But," I begin, before trailing off into stunned silence. I shake my head. "I felt fine," I finish at last, weakly.

Dr. Samir sits down on the edge of my bed, close to my left foot. "Adrenaline can do miraculous things for the body," he says. "And you were lucky," he adds. "If the rescue team hadn't gotten you out of the shuttle as quickly as they did, you likely would not be here to tell the tale."

I look at him. Blink. And then the pieces slot together. The official record must state that it was a shuttle craft accident after all. And, apparently, not even my doctor knows the truth.

I want to scream.

I do not. Instead I merely nod, and say, "Truly." It sounds hollow, and I wonder if Dr. Samir will notice.

If he does, he does not comment on it. He merely stands, and looks at a padd he takes out of a pocket—I wonder, off-handedly, how many pockets doctors and nurses have in their coats—and then turns to me with a smile.

"You will have a physical assessment in five days. After that, we'll be able to better determine how well you are healing. I will warn you though," he says, "you will likely be here at the hospital for at least ten days. This will enable us to more closely monitor your progress, as well as start the intense physical therapy that will be required to retrain many of your newly grown muscles how they're supposed to function."

All I can do is nod. Everything feels very distant, and very terrible.

"I see here," Dr. Samir goes on, "that there is a note requesting that you meet with a psychologist upon regaining consciousness. I will notify Starfleet HQ, and I presume someone will be sent out in the morning."

He smiles at me. "Is there anything else you would like to know?"

I look at him, then down at the sheets covering my legs. "Ensign Janeway," I say after a moment of trying to order my thoughts. "How is she?"

I hear Dr. Samir pause. Then he says, carefully, "Her prognosis looks good. She is out of the proverbial woods, and we hope that we will be able to bring her out of the partially-induced coma in the next few days."

My entire body stiffens. The muscles and skin on my back tingle and then burn, and my side cramps. My knuckles turn white around the sheets that I clench between my fingers.

"Coma?" I ask. I still do not look at him.

"Yes," Dr. Samir says. His voice is quiet and sympathetic. I think I hate him for it. "She woke once in transit to the hospital, and Dr. Crusher was forced to place her in a medically-induced partial coma to keep her from hurting herself."

My hands, if possible, clench tighter. "Will she be okay?" I ask.

Dr. Samir hesitates again. "I do not pretend to know what happened in that…shuttle accident," he says. I realize, for the first time, that he probably knows just as well as I do that "shuttle accident" is code for "classified" as often as not. "What I do know," he says, "is that right now it is up to her."

I nod. "Thank you, Doctor." I am sincere, though my voice does not sound it.

There is a long beat of silence. Then Dr. Samir says, "If you need anything, do not hesitate to ask one of the nurses."

I nod again.

"I will see you in a few hours."

A third nod.

Then the sound of the door opening and closing behind receding footfalls.

I do not look up. All I can see are the sheets, and my white knuckles, and the memory of her blood seeping across the floor.

~*x*~

Two days after waking on Earth, I visit Kathryn.

She is still unconscious, her body hooked up to monitors set into the walls, her eyes closed and her body almost unnaturally still, save for the slight rise and fall of her chest as she breathes. She is pale, and her red hair has been wound into a tight braid that falls over the pillow beneath her head.

Looking at her, I feel sick.

The last time I had seen her, she was naked and covered in blood. Now she is small, so very small, swaddled in blankets and technology that reads her heartrate, her oxygen levels, her brain patterns. And she is blessedly, blessedly clean.

Seeing her is at once reassuring, and terrifying.

I sit by her bed for an hour, before a nurse finds me to lead me back to my own room. That night I dream of the Cardassian cell, and of the braided leather thongs that ripped my back to shreds, and I lose track of where my screams end and hers begin. Mianni wakes me, and then holds me steady as I retch into the toilet in the small, attached bathroom. She brings me a sedative, and after that, if I dream, I do not remember it.

When I arrive at her room the next morning, I find that I am not the first one there. Admiral Edward Janeway already sits in the chair I had sat in the day before. His head is bowed, his hands clasped together with elbows on his knees, and I cannot help but think that he looks as if he prays.

I wonder what it is he prays for.

I wonder if it is the same that I have prayed, now, every night since waking here.

He jumps when I clear my throat, and spins quickly in his seat to look at me. When he sees who it is, his eyes go hard. One second they are more blue than grey, a calm sea beneath a spring sky—and then they are cold, grey stone. His lips harden into a thin line, and when he stands, I find that though he is shorter than I am, I feel that I am looking up at him.

"Captain Paris," he growls.

"Admiral," I say.

The moment of silence that follows is painfully long and excruciatingly tense. I want to turn and flee; I want to step forward and punch him. A thousand thoughts tumble through my head, but not one of them slows for long enough that I am able to grab it. So I simply stand there, under Admiral Janeway's angry look, and wait.

"Did you want something?" the Admiral asks at last.

I swallow. "Only to see how Kathryn is doing."

I realize, only too late, that I have used her first name when I should have used her rank or, at the very least, her last name. Admiral Janeway's glare grows sharp—sharp enough that I am surprised it does not cut me—and I see his fingers curl into a fist by his side.

"I think you should leave," he says at last. His voice is terse and unforgiving.

"I think you're right," I say.

I back out of the room, and then turn and all but flee to my own. It is only when I am safely back in my own bed that the anger and hurt come.

Do you think I wanted this? I wish I had asked.

I would have traded places with her in a heartbeat, I wish I had said.

You have no right to treat me as if I'm the one who hurt her, I wish I had told him.

I have died again every moment since it happened, I wish I had never realized.

But there is only empty silence, and I do not see Admiral Janeway again until the hearing.

~*x*~

My family comes to see me on the fifth day.

Nurse Mianni tells me in the morning that Theresa comm.'d to say that she and Tom would come in the afternoon. I tell her that I wish she had stalled them for another day at least; I am still wobbly on my legs, and am exhausted from the physical therapy, and waspish because Kathryn has yet to waken.

After lunch, I take my leave of my room and make my way down the hall to Kathryn's. I expect I will have a couple of hours before my wife and son make the trip, and by the time they are gone I am sure that Admiral Janeway will be back from Starfleet HQ. He spends most nights at Kathryn's side, which means I spend most afternoons with her.

Ever since the awkward exchange with Admiral Janeway, I have been careful to time my visits when he is not here. So far as I know, none of the rest of her family have come to see her. I suspect that her father is behind that. I, personally, am grateful for it; if more of the Janeway family visited, I would be even more cautious and wary than I already am. I do not think I want to know what Gretchen Janeway would have to say to me, whether she knows the truth behind the "shuttle accident" or not.

The room is empty when I arrive. I sit in the chair pulled up to Kathryn's bedside, and I watch her eyes flicker restlessly under her eyelids. I wonder what she is dreaming of. I suspect it is nothing good.

The afternoon is beginning to wane into evening when I hear a voice at the door. It is high, and young, and angry, and it is a voice I know well.

"Dad?"

It is Tom.

I turn in my chair to look at him. He is standing in the doorway, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, and as I watch, his expression slides from shocked relief to stormy anger. He shoves his hands deeper, and his eyes flash as he takes a step into the room.

"Wow." Tom's voice is as hard as flint, and just as dangerous. "Don't tell me you forgot Mom and I were coming."

"Tom," I say, because nothing else will come to mind.

Tom snorts, and rolls his eyes. He does not speak, but he does not need to.

"I lost track of time," I say. It is not a lie, but it feels like one.

"Yeah," Tom says. "Sure."

"I'm sorry," I say.

Tom rolls his eyes again. "Right," he says. "Well, Mom's waiting for you in your room. Maybe you'd actually like to see her."

I open my mouth. I want to say that I wanted to see him more than anything. I want to say that seeing him is the best thing that has happened to me in more than three weeks. I want to say that I love him more than anything in the galaxy, and that he is the reason that I held onto my principles and my pride until all but the very end.

But all of the words jumble, and then stick in my throat, and I say nothing.

So instead I stand, stiff and slow, and make my way to the door with one last glance down at Kathryn. She is as still as ever, and though I do not want to leave her, I know I must. Tom watches me watch her, and I feel as if a private moment has been intruded upon—but then I push that notion away. He is my son, and Kathryn is not my daughter.

I pause two steps out of the door, and turn to look at Tom still standing where he had rooted himself. The tangle of words parts, and at last something, something comes forth.

"Thank you," I say, "for coming today."

"Sure," Tom says again after a second—but this time he says it differently. He offers me a slow, wary half smile, and I try to smile back at him. I do not know if I succeed.

Then I turn and make my stiff, slow way down the hall back to my own room, and to my wife.

~*x*~

The hearing takes place the day after I am released from the hospital.

Three admirals and a Federation judge sit on a raised dais before the podium behind which I stand. Admiral Janeway is not one of the three, but he and another admiral, as well as a young woman with a transcribing padd, sit in chairs along the wall.

The questions are simple and the answers concise. Admiral Corus leads the hearing, asking me to recount the series of events that led up to our capture, asking what transpired during the interrogations, asking what I revealed to my Cardassian interrogators. I answer as readily as I am able, and as honestly as I can make myself be.

At the end of it all, it is a formality more than anything. They pronounce me blameless, and state that I am fit to return me to active duty as soon as the doctors clear me. I nod, and thank them, though the words taste like ash on my tongue.

Admiral Janeway stops me on my way out of the courtroom. I stop, stiff and silent, and look at him with fidgety concern. I have no idea what it is he wants to say to me.

"They're taking Kathryn off of the sedatives tonight."

Regardless of the fact that I did not know what to expect, I am surprised to hear this. "I am…" I hesitate. "I'm glad," I say at last.

Admiral Janeway's expression is painfully neutral. "I thought you would like to know."

"I did. I do. Thank you."

Admiral Janeway does not say you are welcome. Instead he merely nods, and then turns and strides away.

I was never close to Admiral Janeway. We were cordial, and we had worked together on a project some four or five years ago. But nonetheless, as he walks away without a backwards glance, the edge of ice that tempered his voice still ringing in my ears, I feel a hollow sense of loss. I had always respected him, and liked him from afar—and Kathryn was, in many ways, even now, like the daughter I had never had.

Watching him walk away, I feel as if I have lost both of them.

~*x*~

I do not see Kathryn again before departing Earth. The Al-Batani waits for me in orbit, and when the doctors clear me for duty two days later, I receive orders to escort a Vulcan ambassador back to his homeworld.

I do not see her again until the aftermath of her father's and fiancé's deaths.

I will remember wondering if I was a curse to her.

I will also remember wondering if I was a blessing.

She is the daughter I never had. She is the officer I had always dreamed of my son becoming.

But still, even years later, I wake from nightmares where I see her blood seep across a stone floor, and hear her screaming and begging for mercy.

 **fin**

* * *

 **notes:** a sequel to this fic, which will complete the series, will be posted either tomorrow or Wednesday.  
I hope you enjoyed this fic, and I'd love to hear from you.


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